


more to lose than to try and make it better

by secretsarenotforfree



Category: One Tree Hill
Genre: F/M, Kinda Haley, at least it's done now, she's mostly referenced and not explicitly a character, this idea has been bouncing in my head for a while
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25801624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretsarenotforfree/pseuds/secretsarenotforfree
Summary: He’s drawn out, shaky on searing breaths and t-shirt dark with sweat after driving himself hard for an hour alone, before Nathan finally pulls the conviction together enough to open one.
Relationships: Haley James Scott/Nathan Scott
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	more to lose than to try and make it better

**Author's Note:**

> offhandedly in s3 ep1 haley says something about how nathan wouldn't take her calls, so she wrote letters. i fixated on it recently, and this was born.
> 
> title from 'the distance' by aly & aj from my sweet friend ellie's collab naley playist :)

The first letter arrives a week after he gets to Florida.

His phone is full of voicemails that Nathan doesn't yet have the strength to open, taunting him in a way that leads to the beginning of what he knows will be many, many sleepless nights _,_ which, to be fair, had been the norm for him for a while now _. High Flyers_ is everything he thought it would be and a lot of things it wouldn’t, but he’s here, for better or worse. The Florida sun is oppressive and constant, locked in 24 hour battle with the brand new air conditioning system at the college that the camp uses every year. Humidity means that sometimes you feel like you’re swimming when you step outside, and it rains with the kind of consistency he’d only associated with Dan’s shittiness. 

(Every time it does, he thinks of her.)

The camp has about a hundred odd players from high schools up the Eastern Shore, staying in a dorm building on campus. It’s a bit crazy, though he supposes you can’t expect much more from a ragtag group of high energy teenage boys, but he welcomes the distraction. His roommate is a guy named Tony with a picture perfect smile and a fadeaway that almost gives Nathan respect for the move, and they both seem content to be quiet with each other. Nathan doesn’t talk much about himself, but he also doesn’t mind listening to stories of Tony’s younger siblings and seemingly kind, loving parents. 

(Nathan wonders what it’s like to have parents that were everything they were supposed to be. Caring, in love, firm, but kind. No pill addicts from a mother whose earnest love often came wrapped in the wrong packages or fathers who lost their soul so long ago almost no one could remember it anymore and somehow always managed to be able to champion him to others and yet make him feel like a dumb, talentless, piece of shit to his face.)

The postman comes every day after morning practice, and it never occurred to him that he’d be seeing the man enough to learn his last name. Nathan was one of the few who even got real letters, many of the others friends and family operating by email, and they were a group of guys for Gods sake. He got a lot of shit about them, about the girl that they were coming from and about how no one saw him open them, but it didn't take much to convince them to lay off it going after it too hard. He couldn't see the slide of steel that shone in his eyes when he put his foot down about the teasing, but the move had always worked for him. No reason why it wouldn't now.

Nate’s still trying to catch his breath from a grueling practice that he wasn’t yet used to when his name gets called, and he gets the first letter.

The muscles in his calves burn as he jogs over, but it’s nothing like the unexpected scorch his heart gets when he sees the name on the envelope. _Haley James Scott_ in her scrawling, loopy script, something that had always baffled Nathan when the rest of her tended to try to be neat and orderly. He doesn’t recognize the address, but he guesses that maybe she went to stay with her parents for the summer - last he’d heard, before he’d spun out of control in a blur of burning rubber and crushing flashbacks, was that they were parked at an aunt’s house. Then Nathan curses his own memory because, wherever _she was_ , wasn’t his business anymore. 

She’d left him, after all.

(Nathan would never admit to the small map folded and slipped between the pages of his eleventh grade yearbook with worn ballpoint pen marks circled for each stop of her tour, the lines connecting them far bolder strokes than his personal strength was capable of at the time.)

It was easy to remember the crushing loneliness and despair that he had felt in those first few weeks after she was gone, a jagged tear in his heart holding edges that burned at the ever constant, bruising, memory of her. The angrier Nathan got, the more he could pretend that he didn’t want to claw out the organ causing him such pain in his chest for just a goddamn moment of peace from the loss of her. When he’d fallen in love with Haley James, he’d never once considered that she’d rip it all that love and happiness (the first of such he'd ever experienced in his life off the court) away the way she did. He’d never thought anything or anyone in the world could make him feel lower than his father, but. For better or worse, she seemed to be the exception to every rule.

The voicemails, Nathan refused to open. The sound of her voice, the taunting echo of which still floating permanently in his mind if he stopped thinking even for a split second about what he was doing on the court, was too much to hear in real life. Deciding if he was even going to keep them after he eventually listened was a whole other thing.

So he leaves them be.

And he lets three weeks pass by, grueling and lonely, blessedly filled with all kind of physical exercises that Nathan hoped, one day, would make him too tired to think, before he even attempts the thought of opening the tiny pile tucked in his drawer.

The outdoor courts are always open no matter the time of day or night, and despite the fact that it wasn’t hard to think that after doing it all day they would stop, it was often occupied by other players. He’s drawn out, shaky on searing breaths and t-shirt dark with sweat after driving himself hard for an hour alone, before Nathan finally pulls the conviction together enough to open one.

(It’s a mistake.)

It’s been three weeks, but the gentle scent of gardenia and her (still, painfully, the smell of home to him) wafts up like the letter had been pressed into his hands by her just a moment before. Nathan curses that scent, the association it had with flushed cheeks and bright brown eyes, that damnably silky waterfall of hair, and rips open the top of the envelope messily. Neat had no place here. Careful did, a barely noticeable shake on rough fingers when they draw out the three pieces of paper.

(She always went through so many drafts of things, Haley did, when working on them. Didn’t matter if it was an essay, a report or a song, she would practice and write and edit until it met her standards. Until she deemed it was good enough. 

He hated that he knew, the same way he knew that Lucas was his brother and that he had lied (his heart had _not_ gone with him), that she’d gone through what was sure to be the pain of writing this letter multiple times.

Not that he cared, of course.)

The last time Nathan had seen his name etched in that too pretty script, it had been scribbled on the back of a receipt, trapped under the edge of their toaster for safekeeping. A little passive aggressive about having to pick up toilet paper after a shift at the cafe due to Taylor's residency, she’d reminded him to pull aside his laundry. 

It too, had burned with the marriage board.

_Dear Nathan,_

_I love you._

_I love you, I love you, I love you. I’m sorry that I hurt you. I’m sorry that I left, and that when you came back to tell me that you wanted to be with me no matter what, that I left you again, backstage._

_You have to try and understand. I’d never wanted anything in my life the way that I wanted that tour, except for you, and it was an impossible choice. You, or my dreams? You, or a career I hadn’t even known was truly viable until that night? I hurt you, even before I left, with that kiss, but I’ll tell you as many times as you need to hear, it meant nothing._

_I didn’t take off my wedding band because I didn’t love you, or because I wasn’t still with you. Because in my heart, I was, every night and every moment I was gone, but you weren't there, and you were in so much pain. I could feel it, and I knew that I didn't deserve the promises you made me…_

Shit.

Fuck.

He blinks hard, but the words are blurry and unreadable, loopy lines turned wavy. Nathan tells himself that it is sweat dripping into the paper, and not anything else, and tucks it back into its envelope. That was about all he could take for now 

The next night he gets invited to a party with Tony and some of the other guys, freshman girls who lived just off campus, and against his better judgement he goes. It's no different from the ones he had been to or hosted himself at the beach house - surfaces made sticky with beer, or vodka, or anything mixed with whatever was available. Marijuana smoke is blown out the window of the bedroom while music backdropped the myriad of conversations. Nathan sips his lukewarm beer and tries to be happy about the fact that he didn't end up designated driver. Tried not to think about other parties, ones where he was intrigued by the lone, green hatted figure out on the pier or arriving at late, broken VHS player in hand and a whirl of pink and that deep dark red apologizing in his arms. In an effort to kill these thoughts, Nate downs the rest of the cup. Then pours another, for good measure, and drinks it down just as quickly.

Great, now he's a bit woozy and still bummed the hell out. One cup later, this time a mixed drink that a proud half drunk teammate makes for him, and Nate finally tips over to not sober enough to only concentrate on the here and now. He collapses onto a sunken in couch and throws down a crinkled five to join the poker game a few guys have going. If some handwriting on some stupid paper made him feel this out of control, at least he could grab it back in one portion of his life. A girl ends up sitting on the arm of the chair, a few hands in, and asks if she can blow on his cards for luck. She's flirting - Nathan knows - and for a minute, maybe two, (maybe three) he flirts back. Ignores the curdled feeling growing in the pit of his stomach and flashes the Scott Smile.

(He had planned at only using that smile on the girl who he'd _made_ a Scott, but - )

He succeeds only until the minute she puts a hand on his arm and he can't help but flinch. Laugh awkwardly, cards suddenly slipping in his fingers, and act like her touch hadn't burned him with it's wrongness.

(Who the fuck is he kidding. He's pathetic. He's so pathetic right now, still wanting this girl, the one who's left him and broken his heart and who had sent him three letters so far and who's last _I love you_ to him was still stamped in his ears.)

He's sober enough, by the time he makes it back to campus, to finish that first letter. And read the next, eyes glued to the text, analyzing it with attention to detail that he's never given an English assignment and comprehension he would kill to have. Nate reads her words, trickled bits of _Haley_ captured in ink and frozen in time, and tries his damnedest to not let it trigger memories of her. 

The more he reads the harder it gets.

His summer is filled with basketball, of pushing himself farther than he'd thought himself capable of going, and of telling himself and his body that in this, Nathan had the power. Even if the war of his head and heart was still being waged by an unfair enemy, hundreds of miles away and yet stuck, permanent, in his head. Dreams of her stay, stabbing and achey as always, stronger on a day when a letter arrives and weakest only when he's too exhausted to think about more than the next minute. 

Her name on the sending address twists the knife every time, the _Scott_ a pang of its very own, and he's gone. Trapped in memories of the sigh she would let out, sleep thick and small against his chest when he would stroke a thumb on the hair at the nape of her neck. It had always been so fine, so silky, spun bronze gold against his calloused fingers, easy to tangle around his hands. Or, he would get caught in the mental image of the day they had taken an accidental nap at the park only a couples miles from the Rivercourt; the way the bark felt against his back, the rustle of the leaves high above them while Haley wrapped a limb around his and pressed a face into his chest. She had sang a lullaby, quiet and private to him in that mid afternoon early spring, and he'd been powerful to the sound of her voice. 

Was then.

(Was now.)

(He hated that it was the music, that shining, waiting thing inside of her that Nathan himself insisted must come out that had ripped her from him in the end. Left his edges jagged and unsteadied, his strength swept from under him when he'd realized she was truly gone. 

He hated the file folder hidden in his closet for safe keeping, with careful, clipped proof of how damnably proud of her he still was in faded grey type, the pictures of her washed out shadows of the girl he'd once spent every night with her in his arms.)

As the summer winds to a close, Nathan bears with the memories that tug and pull on him. Deals with the ghost of her, doing all the little things that made him fall in love with him more. Excitedly telling him the whole plot of a book he'd never read but would for her, bright honey eyes and descriptive hands. Writing _Mrs. James Scott_ in the corner of her notebooks in class, glinting her wedding ring in a too simple, too powerful way (to Nathan, who felt a surge of pride and _mineminemine_ every time he saw it), kissing him, _kissing him_ -

The kiss memories undid him the most, needled at his heart with the phantom of her lips on his. The misty feel of her fingers, always trying to pull him closer, always wrapped around him, and the way her hot little tongue had made him forget his middle name and who he was before Haley made him hers. The evil, whispering part of his mind asks if Chris has been stealing those kisses, what-ifs of what Nathan hadn't had in five months, but he thinks - _he hopes, against hope_ \- those voices are not right. Are not true.

(His wedding ring, of course, had been with him, every day even when it had left his hand. The chain was an old one, forgotten about from his middle school days, and it feels comforting against the branding ring of gold. Keeps it from creating more anger, more hurt, more wounds to his soul. Nate wonders where it's mate is, it's twin out there, hopefully, with Haley, in fleeting thoughts that he, at least, can banish. Easier than the thought of her.)

He dreads going home, fears all it will bring and all it will mean, and senior year. High School is ending, sands through a clenched fist that waits for no one, and his mind can't stop spinning while he packs up to head home again. Can't stop wishing that he had some sort of gadget or gift to see the future, to face what waited for him at home.

A brother, who he was once again at odds with.

A mom, long suffering and trapped.

A dad, wounded, paranoid, and still so bitter and empty.

(A wife, left behind as she had once left him, and who had had faithfully written him. The whole damn summer.)

For whatever reason it is not enough, not enough to tip the scales in her favor and Nate is scared. Scared, but mostly angry, and it's that he hides behind when he decides that he won't tell her when he gets home. That he'd make her suffer more.

"We have some decisions to make."

(It _her_ it is his _wife, Haley,_ in the flesh and out of his dreams and nightmares, and it has been so long since he had registered her presence again. So long since he felt the suffocating knowledge of their brokenness turn him cracked and a little pissed off and still deep in fucking love with her. He hopes that she leaves before he because if Nate gets a whiff of that damn gardenia conditioner, he's going to lose it. And he doesn't know exactly what.)

"Yeah. We do."

There is another girl, that wrote letters all summer to a very different, very undeserving boy in Tree Hill, but they do not hold a candle to the importance of the ones that Nathan Scott saved, pressed and protected, all throughout that muggy, painful summer.

It strengthens the roots. It holds on to what they have. 

_I'm not going anywhere._

(And maybe, maybe, a shred of him believes.)


End file.
